Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!


“Rarely have I read a book that challenged me to see myself in an entirely new light, and was at the same time laugh-out-loud funny and utterly absorbing.”—Katie Couric


“This is a daring, delightful, and transformative book.”—Arianna Huffington, Founder, Huffington Post and Founder & CEO, Thrive Global


“Wise, warm, smart, and funny. You must read this book.”—Susan Cain, New York Times best-selling author of Quiet


From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist’s world—where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).


One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose of­fice she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.


As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives — a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys — she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.


With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.


Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is rev­olutionary in its candor, offering a deeply per­sonal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly reveal­ing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.

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Published Apr 2, 2019

432 pages

Average rating: 8.09

947 RATINGS

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What Bookclubbers are saying about this book

✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI

Readers say *Maybe You Should Talk to Someone* is a deeply moving, relatable exploration of therapy from both therapist and client viewpoints. Praised...

Ginac
Jan 07, 2026
4.5
Shananigans
Mar 02, 2023
10/10 stars
Hand's down one of the best nonfiction/memoir books I have ever read. Lori is a superb writer as evidenced by her ability to take a tough topic and make it such an enjoyable read. Funny, savvy, vulnerable, insightful, and heavy at times, this memoir of a therapist and all its life lessons packed into 400-plus pages resonated with me in so many ways. I loved going through her patients' emotional journeys, finding out more about their lives, and crying along with them for all the tragedies and breakthroughs. If you enjoy exploring what makes us human and personal growth, this is a must read.
StephGold
Jan 06, 2026
10/10 stars
This is one of the best books I have ever read about the therapeutic experience; both as a therapist and as a client. I was so deeply touched and emotionally moved that I found myself laughing and crying out loud throughout my reading of it. It has echos of Yalom's Love's Executioner but with a fresh and more relatable feel.

This is a must read for therapists. Skip it to the front of your reading list. You won't regret it.
yutsi
May 12, 2025
8/10 stars
4.5. Touching and at times hilarious.
Sathiskumar
May 08, 2025
8/10 stars
Amazing book

It was slow initially. But have to read it that way because it capture emotions as well as life. Glad I read this book.

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